Middle school students\u27 mental models of magnets and magnetism

The purpose of this study was to conduct a detailed analysis of students\u27 mental models across three themes related to magnetism: what magnets are, what it means to be magnetized, and how magnetic interactions occur. Mental models are organized collections of conceptions, run in one\u27s mind, to help understand the world (Johnson-Laird, 1983). They also provide the learner a means to organize concepts in a way to help understand the world or to explain it to others (Clement & Sarama, 2004; Harrison & Treagust, 1996). While there has been considerable prior research documenting students\u27 conceptions related to magnetism, the majority of the studies comprising this informative and valuable body of work has been confined to specific concepts at points in time. Comparatively, few studies have examined how students make sense of multiple concepts relating to magnetism and how the sophistication and explanatory power of their mental models comprised of these concepts change with instruction. Using an interpretive research design, the goal here was not to count concepts or individuals\u27 representations of them, but rather to qualitatively search for patterns in representations of students\u27 conceptions and lines of reasoning that are indicative of broader interpretations of experience (Strauss & Corbin, 1998) – students\u27 mental models relating to magnetism. Using a variety of methods of elicitation, including free response items prior to and throughout instruction and semi-structured interviews, I identified five categories of concepts from which students constructed their mental models: (1) material-based properties; (2) two-sidedness; (3) internal features; (4) organization; and (5) external spatial features. Analysis of the representation of concepts among these categories yielded five levels of mental models based on model sophistication and ability to explain magnetic phenomena across diverse contexts. Results suggested that through explicitly scaffolded instruction based on a small number of fundamental principles, 8th grade students were able to construct level-appropriate microscale-based mental models of magnetic phenomena